Big building firms linked to improper dealings with subcontractors

Nick McKenzie, Richard Baker

Some of Australia's biggest building firms are implicated in improper dealings with subcontractors and union officials on construction and mining sites across the country.

On Friday, building giant Brookfield Multiplex suspended a Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union delegate from a Melbourne central business district project amid allegations of favours and kickbacks on the site involving at least two subcontractors. In other developments, a major mining project run by Fortescue Metals in Western Australia has been infiltrated by a subcontractor linked to the Hells Angels.

A secret Victorian government-commissioned inquiry into the involvement of organised crime in the building sector is understood to have found that a small number of senior employees working for Thiess on the state's desalination plant engaged in improper dealings to farm out subcontracts to favoured firms.

The union delegate at the Brookfield Multiplex site in Melbourne is the third CFMEU official to have been recently forced from their job in connection with allegations improper dealings.

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It is understood a senior site manager allowed a union delegate to influence which subcontractors won work. The delegate and his associates are understood to have received in return various inducements from these subcontractors.

On Friday, a Brookfield Multiplex spokesperson said the firm was ''acting on all of the information we receive. As such we have suspended [a union delegate] while we await the outcome of our own investigations.''

It is understood the Australian Crime Commission has also recently received evidence of building company employees receiving a kickback from subcontractors for every worker they employ on a site.

One example detailed in leaked building company emails involves a senior site supervisor getting between $5 to $10 an hour for every piece of machinery he placed on the $600 million Queensland Coal Connect project in 2008.

Evidence also reveals that a Perth mining and construction services subcontractor working for a mining project run by Fortescue Metals sought kickbacks in return for awarding downstream contracts to other subcontractors.